ACES

I was just involved in a discussion on creating IDTs for color grading in ACES cct in Resolve 14 when there is no built-in IDT. Or if the existing IDT isn't ideal.

Here's the process that I worked out:

When there is no IDT specified in the project and the clip, then Resolve expects the data to be in linear gamma and AP0 gamut. An input LUT can be applied before Resolve translates the clip to ACES cct color space. Thus a LUT that can translate the camera data into linear / AP0 is a proper replacement for an IDT.

This can easily be achieved in LUTCalc (https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/). To test this theory I took a clip and set the default Slog3/S-Gamut3.Cine IDT and took a screen grab for reference. I then created a custom LUT with these settings in LUTCalc. I set the clip's IDT to None and added the new LUT as the input LUT for the clip.

As seen below, the resulting image matches the reference images from the original IDT, suggesting that the two operations are equivalent.

This now opens the opportunity to make additional customizations to this input LUT to taste, or create a LUT that matches the camera specifics of unqiue cameras.

Based on this article, the other option is to create a DCTL script: http://acescentral.com/t/adding-idts-to-resolve/161/2. A DCTL script has the advantage that it's precise math rather than interpolated lookup table. The code in a DCTL script matches the math precision the built-in IDT use.

Using the Sony SLog-3 IDT and converting it to a DCTL file, which then is placed into the LUT folder and used instead of IDT or Input LUT also creates an equivalent image. In fact it creates an exact match when using a reference wipe, whereas the input LUT yields minor variations, presumably based on the less precise math or LUTCalc having slightly different input values.